Cochin is a fast developing commercial and tourist destination. But the city has its own problems – traffic jams, garbage strewn over the place, open drains, potholes, narrow roads and so on. What is it that can be done to make it a much better place to live? This is exactly what CPPR wishes to find out under Reinventing Cochin project….the part played by the state and civil society

Friday, January 14, 2011

Traffic management for Cochin city

Most of the days, news papers are flooded with the accident deaths on the city roads. in a city of more than 3500 private buses and more than 10, 000 trips every day, i wonder these accident rates need to be looked beyond the media parleys. Our roads are over loaded and streets are congested. In addition to that more than 160 vehicles are added to the roads in the district every day. while SA road, Banerjee Road and MG Road are main stays of the city traffic, what we lack is not only the hardware but software too. i believe that even if the hard ware part is lacking, a better and equipped software can solve the traffic chaos on the streets easily. what city requires is a traffic management team and control unit. it shall be managed by traffic experts and not by the traffic police. Some how, a wrong impression is created among the general public and administrators that traffic police has the solution for all the traffic woes ! with the Vyttila Mobility Hub is on the way to get inaugurated, we can use Hub as the centre for traffic management. in addition to the police aid post there, a city centre traffic management unit shall operate from there. GIS shall be installed in all the public transport vehicles and shall be tracked. Digital display boards at every bus stop and link it with mobile platform so that information on bus schedules are readily available to the passengers. feeder systems can be linked to GIS network by hooking them converting regular mobile phones to GIS. but lets decide that we are going to have trained and qualified team of transport experts running the traffic management and not the traffic police..